In modern "enterprise" digital data processing systems, that is, computer systems for use in an office environment in a company, a number of personal computers, workstations, and other devices such as mass storage subsystems, network printers and interfaces to the public telephony system, are typically interconnected in a computer network. The personal computers and workstations are used by individual users to perform processing in connection with data and programs that may be stored in the network mass storage subsystems. In such an arrangement, the personal computers/workstations, operating as clients, download the data and programs from the network mass storage subsystems for process. In addition, the personal computers or workstations will enable processed data to be uploaded to the network mass storage subsystems for storage, to a network printer for printing, to the telephony interface for transmission over the public telephony system, or the like. In such an arrangement, the network mass storage subsystems, network printers and telephony interface operate as servers, since they are available to service requests from all of the clients in the network. By organizing the network in such a manner, the servers are readily available for use by all of the personal computers/workstations in the network. Such a network may be spread over a fairly wide area, with the personal computers/workstations are interconnected by communication links such as electrical wires or optic fibers.
Users of personal computers and workstations can often modify and adjust certain operational characteristics, or "configurations," according to their individual needs and tastes, including, for example, the default positions, colors and organizations of windows of particular applications programs, an applications program's default working directory (that is, the directory in which data will be stored), the particular indicia which will be displayed to the user, such as the names of fonts, and text items to be used in menus, lists or dialog boxes, as well as such settings for communications devices or communications sessions. When the personal computers and workstations are connected in a network, it is often desirable to have certain of these operational characteristics be controlled on a user-by-user basis or on a computer-by-computer basis, whereas other characteristics should be uniform over the entire network. For example, a user may wish to control such characteristics as the default positions, colors and organizations of windows of particular applications programs based on his or her personal tastes. Similarly, a system administrator may wish to control such characteristics as the settings for communications devices or communications sessions on a computer-by-computer basis based on the computer's particular hardware configuration. On the other hand, a system administrator may wish to control such characteristics as names of fonts, and text items to be used in menus, lists or dialog boxes on a network basis, so that these items will be uniform across the network.
Configuration information is typically stored in a number of files, which the operating system programs and application programs may use during initialization and thereafter to control their operational characteristics. For example, in one popular operating system program, namely, the Microsoft Windows operating system program, particularly Version 3.1, configuration information is typically stored in certain initialization files.